


Your Image Stands Reflected: (or Five Times Rust Cohle Woke Up, and One Time He Didn't)

by Zooheaded



Category: True Detective
Genre: Case Work, Gen, Humor, M/M, Shenanigans, Sleep Deprivation, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooheaded/pseuds/Zooheaded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin, trying my hand at a multi chapter thing. Spans across the timeline and should work out to be a six parter. Might work out to be eventual Rust/Marty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Asleep in the Deep

==1995 Police Record's Room==

 

_((Our bosses don't want you at all, ya understand? I don't want you. You are upright only by the grace of this man's reputation! God damn Cohle, how many ways are there for me to say 'Shut the fuck up'?!))_

Rust blinked slow and his eyelids slid over the surface of his sclera like wet paper towels wiping out over concrete, swiveling around in his head like the wooden eyes of a puppet. He took to trying to move his head more instead, pretending as though his eyes were fixed steady in the sockets of his skull, looking straight forward like an owl's.

_I'll catch for you but you gotta toss me the line and the pole. I'll find your leads, making my lures... you ratfuck._

_Fuckin' Queseda._

The records room was nice, though more similar to library stacks than to any actual room, but it was nice. Its sheet and mattress paper smell lingering in all the cement floored corners and sinking into his clothes like an expensive cologne. Air rumbled through white, angular ducts and a furnace would click on periodically in the distance, the heartbeat and inner workings of some great, slumbering beast. Boxes in towering stacks, rows and rows of them laid out in a gridwork. The stone foundations of an ancient necropolis. Rooms a thousand years wide with a thousand lives per ten square feet, sealed up in little bowing cardboard boxes like promises. _Somebody missed something, but he would find it._ The lights were dim and turning a soft blue with age. Most of the fluorescent bulbs were burnt out. It was easy on his eyes. When the odd one flickered, he'd have to blink and look away, move to somewhere else.

The Record's Room manager Patricia would smile at him and always greet him when he came in. The heels of her shoes cracked softly over polished concrete and he could clock her coming some thirty stacks away. She'd bring him boxes he asked for, brewed coffee in the little percolater she had rigged up in the Record's office. Would bring some to him sometimes in a pink mug smattered with fading red hearts when he was hunched over in one of the chairs like a cathedral gargoyle, and that was nice. Nice of her to do because she didn't have to do it. It made him feel like he was visible. Coffee didn't do much for him these days besides ease the headaches, but mostly he just liked the taste, the smell like rough, out of tune bass piano keys. It warmed his hands when they went cold and stiff from poor circulation. Helped him fit into that person-mold other people could recognize. She let him use the mug as an ashtray and told him if the whole place burned down she'd just move to Florida and retire early.

_((-you Cohle you ratfuck-))_

Patricia'd asked him one evening, can of Raid rolling around on a box she carried to him, if there might be brown recluse hiding out down here. He'd said maybe, it's a good place for a recluse, but she probably didn't have to worry none. He thought of them though when he accidentally brushed the webs of cellar spiders, sending them spinning in place like a child clinging to the bars of a playground merry-go-round. Spinning round and round in the sun and laughing- _just laughing-_

He'd have to quickly look away, hauling his boxes out of the dusty webs.

Rust spent hours down here. Days and days in a row. Looking for that missed something. Breathing in the damp smell and the odor of wasted souls. He'd xerox copies of photos, serene girls staring blankly through him with filmed over eyes, blood gathering on their mouths and skin sinking in and browning where the rot had touched them. Eyes closed mostly, soft-like. Like they could have been sleeping. Some were real young. All with relief spread out clear over their features. Sometimes when the scanning light from the Xerox machine burned over his pupils he could see them mouthing out the words _'thank you, thank you'_ the whispers becoming clear as day and their teeth glittering like hidden pearls.

He'd have to stop, close his eyes, put his head down on his folded arms a moment and wait for it to pass. And it _would_ pass if he waited long enough. They always did.

Eventually, Patricia would leave for the night, usually between five and six, dropping the keys next to him on her way out.

“ _Don't get me in any trouble now Detective Cohle.”_

“ _I won't. Thank you.”_

Rust would wander the stacks alone after, hours spanning out under dimming lights, hunting for the harder to find boxes himself. Hauling them through narrow walkways, lights flickering out and leaving small patches of darkness. He could hear his own heart beating steady in his ears in the small hours. The shuffle of his feet on the floor. He'd wander for so long sometimes he would begin to wonder if he had really disappeared from reality, a ghost living between the stacks, haunting the passages, and slowly rearranging the boxes like a game of Tetris drawn out over decades.

Words burned up into his eyes through his tunneled gaze at the screen of the microfilm reader. Autopsies. Notations. Descriptions. How long they been dead. Caused by strangulation, drowning, laceration, stab wounds to the abdomen. Probable cause. _Spirals_. They had something in common alright, even if Marty refused to see it. He'd show him. Make him understand. Get him back on his side. Rust knew that if he was alone in this it wouldn't happen, but together they could.

_((-grace of this man's reputation!))_

_It would come together_ , Rust thought as he made his own notations on the xerox's, then closed his eyes, opening them again after what felt like a thousand hours. _It would come together._

 

=+=+=+=+=

 

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ man.”

Rust woke in the early morning, shoulders and back gone stiff, hands cold, and feeling that bone deep sluggishness and confusion in his mind and body he normally associated with a Robitussin hangover. A hand rattled his shoulder and Rust shifted his head from where it lay bent at an odd angle upon the desk.

“I been looking all over for you, beginning to think you called in sick, or died in your empty ass whiteout apartment, and you're just down here droolin' over the fuckin' Playboy spread from Hell.”

 _Marty._ Of course it was Marty.

“You been here all night?” Marty asked after, softer, but with a wavering note of suspicion.

Rust dragged his head to the side gingerly, as though his neck might break if he moved it too fast, xeroxed photos sticking slightly to his cheek and lips. He sat up and blinked, like a propped up mannequin, wiping his mouth. He'd have to make a few new copies.

“Guess I fell asleep.” Rust said, not quite believing the words as they came out, even though the evidence was there. He rolled his shoulders a few times, tilting his head to one side, then the other, giving himself a quick shake to get his head in order. Patricia's office was dark. It was still too early for her.

“You _guess_. Jesus. Obsessive." Marty said, nodding his head to himself in confirmation. "Fuckin' _obsessive_. You know, I said you were jerkin' off to pictures of dead girls, and here you are actually _sleeping_ with 'em.” Marty groused and took a sip of his own coffee, steam slipping up over the side of his face. Suit jacket flopped out over his arm, tie half done, and blue eyes drawn down heavy with early morning drowsiness.

“They keep quiet. Unlike you Marty. Always talkin' my ear off.” Rust drawled, tapping a cigarette out of the box in his pocket and perching it between his lips. His mouth tasted like an old sour sock, soaked out in coffee dishwater. He thought of his toothbrush in the locker upstairs.

“Yeah, I'm the one bending your ear with wacko bullshit all day long. Wearing you down one word at a time.” Marty agreed sarcastically with a fake smile, and an accompanying slow nod of his head. His words didn't hold any real venom though, and he was staring up in exasperation at the flickering lights like they might have an explanation for him or some sort of reprieve. “Look, Rust. You gotta go home tonight. Get some _real_ fuckin' sleep. All this shit in here ain't goin' anywhere, but your head definitely will if you keep pulling nights like this.”

“Mmhm.”

Marty sighed, eyes closed, far too tired in the early morning to put up any real kind of argument. “Fuckin' A, just go freshen up or something, powder your fuckin' nose, do your mascara, then we can roll on out of here. Hit the hospitals for our tall, scarred asshole. Oh, I got you a breakfast sandwich, s'on your desk.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever. Don't take too long or Steve'll eat it for you. Napkins and all.” Marty called as he wandered back toward the stairs, not waiting for Rust to get his shit together.

Rust glanced at his watch in the wake of Marty's retreating footsteps. Twenty past seven. He'd slept about four hours. More than his usual, and more than enough to keep him alert. He found himself looking forward to the food, making a note to pay for lunch later. It felt like it was shaping up to be a good day, if he was the kind of person to try to predict such things. A swig of mouthwash and some cold water on his face would do the rest.

 


	2. Catch the Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Marty would think upon the virtues of one Rustin Cohle at a later date. For now he was too preoccupied wobbling down the road in the direction of the car, with the man in question trailing just ahead of him, while sheets of rain slapped down over their backs like the tale end of some fucked up hillbilly rigged water ride.”

_==Kids in the Woods: 1995==_

 

 

“You gotta drive.” Rust says to him as they shamble toward the Chevy in the driving rain like a couple of zombies out of _Dawn of the Dead_.

They were forced to hang around another six hours after they delivered the kids, (one two days gone, the other probably gone in her head forever) talking out of their asses to the CSI unit about what the fuck happened. He knew they'd have to nail down something more concrete to tell them later.

Marty didn't puke when the cleanup crew was shoveling Ledoux's bullet busted skull into a body bag. But he hunched over and lost last night's Taco Bell all over the ground when he caught sight of the empty sun baked dirt, dried blood, and skull bits left behind as though there had never been a body there to begin with, as though if Marty hadn't gone and _fucked up_ , this whole bullshit incident wouldn't have occurred.

“It's ok.” Rust tells him, hand planted stiff but firm against his left shoulder blade, fingers splayed out wide. “I puked after my first too.”

“Yeah, I bet you fuckin' did you dead hearted asshole.” Marty gasped out, spitting and planting his hands upon his shaking knees, holding up his entire weight. The sun was setting on the horizon like a burning copper disc slipping between the foreboding looking storm clouds. A brand new shining penny sliding into the slot. Marty thought he could feel raindrops starting, and wasn't that just the fucking greatest.

“Even if you hadn't Marty...” Rust said by his ear after a pause, voice pitched down low and soft in a way Marty'd never heard before. “Even if you hadn't, the boy- he'd still be dead, regardless.”

Marty nodded, eyes closed. God, didn't he fucking know it.

“Fucker deserved it is what I'm saying.” Rust finishes, giving Marty a quick double thump high on his back before steadying him up with a hand on his elbow.

“Yeah.” Marty doesn't feel _better_ per se, but he stops feeling worse, right up until the moment they're given the all clear to go on home, and an hour and a half drive back sounds like the worst kind of torture after all of this insane horror movie bullshit. But the promise of a mattress to sleep on in Rust's dark, cool apartment is the Heaven's light at the end of the shit tunnel. When he'd come to start thinking of Rust's sad little home with its pile of sex crime books, photos of glassy eyed dead girls tack-pressed into the wall, and two dumpster snagged lawn chairs as any kind of divine reward, he didn't know.

But it could have been about the time that Rust had taken up an AK-47 and emptied the clip out into a field of nothing, then dragged the stinking, bloodied corpse of that fucking _animal_ Reggie Ledoux to a different fucked up location on his shit ranch like it wasn't no big thing. Just to cover Marty's retard ass. All without even a second thought. The idea that he still wouldn't be going home to the warm comfort of Maggie, their cozy bed and his girls, didn't quite sink in deep enough to register just yet, and for now he'd let that thought stay right where it was.

Marty would think upon the virtues of one _Rustin Cohle_ at a later date. For now he was too preoccupied wobbling down the road in the direction of the car, with the man in question trailing just ahead of him, while sheets of Louisiana summer rain slapped down over their backs like the tale end of some fucked up hillbilly rigged water ride.

“Fucking Christ. I can't even believe this shit!” Marty snaps, wiping water out of his eyes and feeling moisture and mud soaking right into the asscrack of his underwear and making every little thorn cut and snag on his arms sting like a motherfucker. _Fuck._

Through all this Marty's aware of his arms tensing and jerking every few moments, reaching out a couple of inches, like he knows Rust is gonna just keel over right there onto the ground. There was no way he wouldn't, and Marty was tensing for the moment when he would absolutely have to catch him, then haul him to the fucking car and then maybe into a hospital. How none of the paramedics realized just how fucked up Rust was, was a real spectacular mystery to Marty. Rust's eyes were practically carved out of his skull with a palette knife and were red rimmed, blood shot and gummy from sleep deprivation and a three day diet of beer, cigarettes, and cocaine. His usual loping walk had spun out sloppy into a full on turkey stagger and Marty could barely even look at the guy without wincing.

But of course, typical of Rust's regular bullshit, he just keeps on moving forward like some kind of unfailing machine. Marty briefly thinks of the robot in _Alien_ and half expects that white milky cum-like fluid to come leaking out Rust's eyes and mouth while the guy tries to kill him with a rolled up magazine. And having thoroughly grossed himself out, Marty promptly tries to think of something else less fucked up.

"What about your truck?" Marty asks suddenly, louder than was likely necessary, but he felt like he couldn't fuckin' hear with the roar of water flooding his ears.

“Gave the keys to a lady in the CSI, she said she'd leave it at the station. Fuck, the rain- the light's too much, I can't-” Rust insists, that manic, crazy person look flooding light back into his eyes, like he's dropped the charade of the professional detective character he'd been playing some forty yards back in the underbrush. “Can't fucking see- when the reflections just-” Then he stops and clams right back up again.

“You having a stroke? What the fuck are you saying to me right now?” Marty grouses, more concerned at this point then angry.

“You gotta drive.” Rust just says. Firmly, eyes darting around the dark landscape like he's looking at hundreds of things Marty can't see. Probably was, for all he knew.

“Yeah, was gonna, was just checking. Jesus.” Marty assures him quickly, fumbling with his keys. He always drove unless he was drunk, and though he was pretty sure this is the most tired he's ever been in his entire life, there ain't no way in holy blue Hell he was gonna let Rust drive his ass around or his own vehicle on the nose candy comedown of a lifetime. He never knew someone could get that little sleep and do that much blow and actually fucking _survive_ the experience. He certainly wasn't gonna take any more chances with letting the fucker operate any kind of motor vehicle.

They collapse into the car, Rust slumping back in his seat like he'd been thrown there, eyes fluttering between open and closed before finally settling on _closed._ Guy didn't even light up a cigarette. And Marty's never been so glad to sit _here_ in this seat, in this shitty car in his entire goddamn life. He grips the steering wheel firmly at ten and two when the car rumbles to life, and tries not to think about what it might have felt like to carry the weight of a dead child. Not just once, but twice.

 

~=+=+=+=~

 

They crawl into the driveway around nine thirty at night, having hit traffic somewhere out on South 167 because some asshole had flipped his car in the rain. Whatever. Marty couldn't be bothered about it. His capacity to give a shit about anything other than changing his clothes, lying down, and sleeping until the sun fell out of the sky and extinguished in the Gulf, had run out some four hours ago.

Rust seemed to have finally crumbled down from his high horse to rest at Marty's level. His eyelids were drawn down so low in the dim streetlights that for all Marty could tell, he was staggering up to his apartment door blind, holding the door key out straight but wavering like his very own white cane.

They get inside, barely speaking and retreat into to their respective corners. The rainwater had eliminated the immediate need for a shower and Marty was glad of it for once, because he didn't think he would have been able to manage it. He could barely even manage the staircase.

The last thing he saw before he made his way upstairs, stripped, and collapsed onto his own mattress, was Rust standing in the center of the kitchen, gingerly peeling his worn, rain soaked t-shirt off of his shoulders and dropping it at his feet.

 

~=+=+=+=~

 

Sometime in the small hours of the morning, Marty comes awake with his mouth full of sun-dried cotton and an incredible need to piss. He hikes his boxers up higher on his hips and clings tight to the bannister as he descends, every inch of him tired and sore like he'd been beaten with a club.

In the bathroom he guzzles water out of the little blue, fish patterned plastic cup while simultaneously blindly aiming his dick at the toilet, only vaguely caring if he gets it all in. Whatever. Fuck it. He could clean it later if it was gonna be a problem. The air conditioner rumbles in the kitchen wall near the sliding door and Marty shivers, bare feet thumping on the linoleum. He doesn't think he could get any more Frankenstein if he held his arms straight out and groaned.

On a whim, by accident really, he glances over at where Rust is sleeping and sees him sprawled there in the slanting streetlight coming in through the blinds. Mouth wide-the-fuck-open and naked as a jay-bird. Pale, pert ass laid out for the whole goddamned world to see and burning Marty's eyes right out of his fucking head.

“Jesus Christ. Don't need this _shit_.” Marty mutters to himself furiously, casting his squinting eyes around for something to cover the guy with. He didn't deserve to be affronted with another man's naked ass while he was in this kind of state. Shit just wasn't right.

In the closet Marty finds a folded up dark blue comforter and holds it out in front of him, creeping toward Rust on his toes like he was trying to throw it over the head of some riled up livestock rather than his partner's sleeping body. There was an enormous bruise laid out in blossoming purples and reds over Rust's shoulder blades like he'd been struck with a blunt object. A bat maybe. But Marty couldn't remember seeing him get hit with anything.

 _Jesus, was he dead?_ Marty stared determined at his face. Mouth open, no sound. _Holy shit._ What if his heart had just given out on him from all the drugs and whatever other shit he'd been doing while Marty sat in the car in his goddamned Pink Floyd t-shirt like an idiot? Had he done harder drugs? What if he was just lying dead right here? _JesusJesus._ It would be just like Rust to up and expire while Marty was in the house with him wouldn't it? _That fucking asshole, that fucking- fuck did he move?_

Feeling a touch of panic, Marty dropped the blanket down on him, covering him from the shoulders down, and shit promptly hit the fan:

Rust surges upwards like a live wire, limbs akimbo and one tattooed arm thrusting out to make contact with empty air like the strike of a falcon. Marty yells, surprised, and stumbles backwards, nearly falling on his ass. Rust topples slightly when his fist doesn't connect, and he blinks around the room, eyes wide open, wet and blinking while his mouth swallows wet.

He finally makes eye contact with Marty and makes some kind of phlegmy noise in the back of his throat, then stares up wild-eyed at Marty's face like he's witnessing a flaming plane crash.

“The fuck are you doin'?” He rasps, dazed, with the most genuine confusion Marty has ever heard come out of his mouth.

And Marty's pissed because _of course_ he's not dead-“Here I am thinking you're fucking _dead_ , and I try to go and give your naked ass some dignity and you go and rear up at me like goddamned electrocuted rattlesnake!” He half shouts, but because it's quiet and dark he whispers, making his yell sound low and hoarse like he's been drinking sand.

Rust blinks his eyes a few times hard, propped up on his hand and elbow, bare feet sticking out from the bottom of the askew blanket and sniffs once, hard, through his nose.

“Gotta go into the office, get that shit in order.” Rust eventually says, sounding about seven miles outside of his body.

_The fuck?_

“Uh, no we don't. It's Sunday.” Marty says.

Rust just stares at him, blinking his bloodshot, fucked up eyes at him like he's the second coming of Christ, and it takes Marty several beats longer than it should have to realize that Rust was either not yet fully awake or still too dog tired to think straight.

“Sunday Rust.” Marty says a little quieter. “It's Sunday. We don't gotta go into work, probably not Monday either actually, but we don't gotta do anything but sleep alright?”

Rust shifts his eyes to the wall behind Marty's head for a long moment, then down to the floor. He sways dangerously on his elbows, then brings up two long, fine-boned fingers to rub at his eyes, wincing.

“Gettin' you some water.” Marty announces and goes into the kitchen.

The glass Marty brings back is grabbed from his fingers with shaking hands and sucked down in fifteen seconds flat. After that, Rust promptly curls up in his blanket and passes out, lying there like he's died all over again.

 _Jesus_.

Marty idles there a good ten minutes after, wondering if he should be calling a hospital, or god-fucking-forbid _Maggie_. He could recognize it now, he was _worried_. All because Rust had stumbled around in his shot-up leather jacket with his stupid fuckin' wallet chain like some coke-addled velociraptor to get this Ledoux asshole. And Marty had barely done fuckall but look like a lame-ass dad, and nearly blew their cover looking for Rust in the biker bar.

Oh and killed their suspect in cold blood. How could he for- _fucking_ -get?

He sits there a while longer, feeling distinctly guilty and a bit afraid until he hears a low snore coming from the mattress. He glares daggers into Rust's face for making him think that he was dying for even a single goddamned second.

“Oh, _fuck you_.” He hisses, flips him the bird, then hobbles back upstairs to bed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This turned out funnier than I originally meant it to be.
> 
> I dunno, I feel like Rust is easier to write then Marty is. Let me know how I'm driving the redneck mobile (especially pre-2012 Marty who is kind of an enormous turd). "Coke addled Velociraptor" is a tag I read from... I think it was Inkandcayenne on tumblr. I remember I laughed at the complete accuracy, so credit goes to them! And credit to Blackeyedblonde for them always accusing each other of having a stroke whenever either of them has a moment.


	3. Dry Prong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking my whole goddamn life to update this, been busy, sick, and busy.

_==Dry Prong, Louisiana: 1997==_

 

“Rust.”

Rust's head lolls, and he feels the familiar stirrings of base consciousness sparking low in the back of his skull like those first few clicks of a gas stove. He lingers there on the knife's edge between sleep and wakefulness, tasting amber tree sap and warm milk. Another few seconds of quiet, and the lull of the rocking car would send him pitching back into dreams, but it was not to be:

“Rust, wake up, we're fucking lost.” Marty's voice, a little louder this time, and that word _lost_ gets his attention. Rust picks his head up from where it had fallen into the space between the seat's headrest and the window, neck stiff, blinking groggily in the sunlight.

“Mm, wasn't sleeping.” He says and reaches instinctively for the cigarette box in his shirt pocket.

“Yeah, ok, just get the map out.” Marty grunts, face already scrunched up in irritation.

“Thought you knew where you were going.” Rust drawls, plunging his hand into the door's side pocket to fish out the Louisiana atlas.

Marty huffs and gives a quick, forceful shake of his head. “Thought I did,” he admits quietly.

The buttery, August sun beats down through the sandblasted windshield of Marty's Chevy. The heat is almost a weighted, physical thing, the last violent death throes of summer. Rust unfolds the Louisiana road atlas and squints down at it, the pages spread open so wide in his lap that it spills over to Marty's side, the edge of it just barely resting upon his knuckles while he drives.

Rust knew that the crime scene was just inside Dry Prong, Marty'd claimed to know how to get there and didn't require any navigational assistance on Rust's part, but they'd somehow bypassed the whole damn town to end up on some godforsaken side road. Rust couldn't remember half the ride, admitting to himself that he must have dozed off sometime after they'd hit Alexandria. The text for the road names was tiny, and he could already feel a headache forming in a pool of liquid orange in the front of his skull.

He can feel Marty's eyes darting over to him too, little flickering pinpricks of heat brushing up against the side of his face, “Can you close that a little? I'm tryin' to fuckin' drive here.”

“Looking for our town, since you seem to have missed it.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Marty swears, “they musta changed a road sign or something, I could sworn I knew how to get there.”

“Could always ask for directions.” Rust suggests mildly, pushing a cigarette into his mouth, but not lighting it just yet, the smooth paper sticking to his lips and making his teeth itch.

“Why bother when I've got you perched right here next to me and your map with the whole goddamn world plastered on it?” Marty grouses, and slaps at the corner of the atlas that is touching him with an uncoordinated flap of his hand, downright irritable now, “tiny ass shithole in the middle a' bumfuck nowhere, anybody coulda driven right past it. Probably only fifteen fucking people living there anyway with less than eight teeth between them.”

“A population of three hundred and eighty by the 1990 census.” Rust deadpans, clicking his zippo lighter to life and holding the wobbling flame at the tip of the cigarette with practiced precision.

“Yeah ok, _Mr. Peabody_. Jesus.”

“Least I ain't gonna drool or piss in the car.” Rust answers around a breath of exhaled smoke.

“Yeah I seen you drool plenty when you fall asleep in here.”

“Told you. I don't sleep, I d-”

“Dream. Yes. Fucking Christ, Rust.” Marty pauses, then looks over at him, “thought you didn't watch TV.”

Rust doesn't give voice to quiet, caramel soaked Saturday mornings in another life. Sophia plopped into his lap with her stuffed rabbit, pushing cheerios into her mouth, her tiny fist becoming soaked with milk. She'd giggle when soggy cheerios inevitably ended up in his coffee but would otherwise be enthralled by _Mr. Peabody, Rocky and Bullwinkle,_ and a whole pile of cartoons he couldn't quite remember that rolled by on the little TV he and Claire had picked up fresh from Sears when they'd first bought the house. He wouldn't let himself think any further than that.

“Ah, not til I was seventeen.” He says instead, pulling another hard lungful of smoke before letting it ease out through the open window, trees whizzing past in a soil and mint flavored green blur.

He finally laid eyes on 'Dry Prong' on the atlas and folded the map back up around it to scrutinize the smaller area with a critical eye, but there simply was not enough information present to tell them where they might have ended up.

“Mighta taken the wrong split on the 165.” Rust suggested, there really wasn't much else he could offer that Marty wouldn't throw down into the dirt.

“Fuck, well, I'm sure there'll be a sign coming up somewhere.” Marty says confidently. “We don't find this place soon I'm gonna go fuckin' shithouse.”

“Mmhm.” The crime scene and their DB would still be there, even if they ran a little late, so he was fine with letting Marty fuck around on an empty road as much as he felt was necessary.

“You get one yet?” Marty asks curiously after a long silence. _He means a TV_. As though that had some kind of social bearing upon Rust as a person. Have a house, get a girlfriend, get a dog, own a TV. The whole American dream shit spiel he'd never put much stock in.

“Naw, figure I see enough bullshit during the day, and I get all my news from you anyhow.”

“Yeah, well somebody's gotta keep your ass up to date.”

“I don't think Princess Diana getting killed in a car crash is gonna be affecting my day to day much, Marty.”

“She was a fuckin' princess okay? Just trying to make sure you don't live under a rock or exist in a fuckin' “vacuum” or whatever other shit, gotta have something to tell Lori aside from the secret truth of the universe,” Marty answers, “unless she's into that, and in that case, knock yerself out.”

“She _does_ have a TV.”

“Well there you go,” Marty laughs, then his face turns a bit more thoughtful. Rust knows what Marty's going to ask before he even opens his mouth: “How's that going huh? You and her?”

And Rust thinks about it, the soft brown of her hair and how her hands were always warm in his. The way she rubbed his shoulders if he sat on the floor in front of her when they watched the evening news. They saw each other pretty regularly, got along good, and she was smart. Made good conversation, and she didn't ask him to do anything too special in bed, and really that was fine, Rust didn't need much.

“Going alright I guess.” He was almost surprised when he actually believed the words that came out of his own mouth. He never imagined he would make it back to something even remotely close to what he'd had before. Contentment. He hadn't even expected to live this long.

“That's good man, that's real good.” Marty says around a smile, and it's genuine.

“Yeah.”

Rust lets Marty drive aimlessly a while, waiting for him to get good and pissed before suggesting they might ask for directions again. Marty scowled at the road like it had personally betrayed him, “Fucking nothing out here. Nothing,” he says as they drive through miles of thick forest, farmhouses winding by with Rhode Island Red hens pecking out a meal on the side of the road, “no wonder that guy got a bullet in him, I lived out here, I'd probably shoot somebody too.”

“Gash bait waitin' ain't bringin' the kinda sport you're looking for Marty?” Rust drawls pleasantly, eyes fixed on the changing landscape.

Marty sighs, tired and angry. “Fuck you.”

Rust mouth quirks up at the corners in the ghost of a smile.

It was more than enough.

 


End file.
